What the Afghanistan mission teaches Canada

2017 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-141
Author(s):  
Stephen M. Saideman
Keyword(s):  
Prime Ministers ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Government ◽  
Afghanistan Mission ◽  
The Military

This paper considers some of the lessons that can be drawn from Canada’s experience in Afghanistan. It focuses not just on the military but also on the rest of the government, two prime ministers, the opposition, the media, and the public. While the primary lesson might be “do not do this kind of thing again,” there are other lessons to draw that apply to Canada’s foreign and defence policies every day.

scholarly journals Media’s Portrayal of Homosexuality and Rape as a Reflection of Cultural Acceptance?

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tina C. Touitou
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Video Clip ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Public ◽  
Cultural Taboos ◽  
Short Video ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Military

The study focuses on media’s portrayal of homosexuality as a reflection of cultural acceptance in the society. The first representation of gay men in the United States to a national audience occurred in 1967 with the airing of a documentary titled “The Homosexuals,” which is filled with harmful, derogatory stereotypes etc. The fact that homosexual characters were mostly guest stars as opposed to leading characters also suggests that gay activist were taking a less radical approach by attempting to improve acceptance of homosexual. In Nigeria, homosexuality is a taboo, abnormal and not accepted. The media can and has with some degree of success helped break down the cultural taboos associated with sensitive sexual topics and bridge some gaps in our sexual knowledge. The paper adopted empirical secondary data, and employed cultivation theory. It proved that the media have power in shaping people’ believe and perception, and can form or modify the public opinion in different ways depending on what the objective is. For example, Pakistani media influenced the opinion against the Taliban in Swat by repeated telecast of a video clip showing whipping of a woman by a Taliban. Before that, the public opinion over the military action against the Taliban was divided, but repeated telecast of this short video clip changed the public opinion overnight in favor of the government to take action. The paper recommended that the media should take a firm stand, not playing two-edge sword on  the reportage of homosexuality, and should remain a ‘watchdog’ and the ‘mirror’ of the society.

How to Tell the Truth without Outraging the Press?

MedienJournal ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 37
Author(s):  
Li Xiguang
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Public Affairs ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
The Public ◽  
News Stories ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Government ◽  
Chinese News Media

The commercialization of meclia in China has cultivated a new journalism business model characterized with scandalization, sensationalization, exaggeration, oversimplification, highly opinionated news stories, one-sidedly reporting, fabrication and hate reporting, which have clone more harm than good to the public affairs. Today the Chinese journalists are more prey to the manipu/ation of the emotions of the audiences than being a faithful messenger for the public. Une/er such a media environment, in case of news events, particularly, during crisis, it is not the media being scared by the government. but the media itself is scaring the government into silence. The Chinese news media have grown so negative and so cynica/ that it has produced growing popular clistrust of the government and the government officials. Entering a freer but fearful commercially mediated society, the Chinese government is totally tmprepared in engaging the Chinese press effectively and has lost its ability for setting public agenda and shaping public opinions. 

Prime Ministers and the Public

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Weller
Keyword(s):  
Prime Minister ◽  
Significant Part ◽  
Media Management ◽  
Prime Ministers ◽  
The Public ◽  
Electoral Campaigns ◽  
Technological Capacity ◽  
The Media

Prime ministers are the key campaigners for their governments, not just in electoral campaigns, but every day and in every place. Media management has become a continuing and significant part of the prime ministers’ activities; it is a daily, indeed an hourly, pressure. Speeches have to be planned. The pressure has changed the tone and priorities of governing. It has dangers as well as benefits. Media demands have become more immediate, more continuous, and more intrusive. Prime ministers must respond. The same technical changes allow prime ministers to interact with their voters in a way that bypasses journalists and other intermediaries. They are writ large in campaigns. They are never out of mind or out of sight. Re-election is always a consideration for tactics and strategy. The public leader, the ‘rhetorical prime minister’, is shaped by the demands of the media and organized by the technological capacity.

scholarly journals The General, His Fandom, and a Participatory Pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 82 ◽  
pp. 53-78
Author(s):  
Angelina Ilieva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Focal Point ◽  
Public Image ◽  
Fan Culture ◽  
The Public ◽  
Military Medical Academy ◽  
Medical Academy ◽  
The Media ◽  
Characteristic Features ◽  
The Military

In February 2020, the Bulgarian government established the National Operational Headquarters for Combating the COVID-19 Pandemic in Bulgaria. General Ventsislav Mutafchiyski, a military doctor, professor at the Military Medical Academy in Sofia, was appointed as its chairman. This paper presents a case study on the public image of Ventsislav Mutafchiyski, its readings and interpretations by the audience, and the specific fan culture that emerged around his media persona during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Bulgaria. Placed in the spotlight of the media at the very beginning of the crisis, Mutafchiyski became extremely popular as the public figure most strongly associated with the fight against the spread of the disease in the country. Around his media persona, shaped in the public imagination as a wartime leader, a fan culture has grown with all its characteristic features and dimensions: fans and anti-fans, affirmative and transformative fandom. As a fictional character, Mutafchiyski has appeared in numerous forms of vernacular creativity: poems, songs, material objects, jokes, fake news, conspiracy theories, and memes. In this way, the General has become the main character of Bulgarian pandemic folklore and the focal point of a participatory pandemic.

scholarly journals HEALTH COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES EMPLOYED BY THE MEDIA DURING THE COVID-19 CRISIS: CASE OF ZIMBABWE BROADCASTING CORPORATION TELEVISION (ZBC –TV)

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberley Sarah Muchetwa ◽  
Ephraim Maruta ◽  
Hilda Jaka ◽  
Joyman Ruvado ◽  
Evans Chazireni
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Health Communication ◽  
Communication Strategies ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
Analysis Data ◽  
Freedom Of Information ◽  
The Public ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Government

The paper reports findings from a study that explored health communication strategies employed by the media on the state of preparedness by the Zimbabwean government during the COVID 19 crisis by the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation Television (ZBC-TV). The study adopted secondary data analysis. Data were collected using secondary sources. The study was influenced by the framing theory. The study found out that ZBC-TV used songs, road shows, commercial ads, dramas, musical shows on reporting the pandemic. The archival documents also revealed that ZBC-TV have used periodical updates as health communication strategies to educate the public about COVID 19. ZBC-TV also used Facebook showing staff from the Office of the President and Cabinet receiving the Covid 19 vaccine at the same time applauding positive response from Harare Metropolitan Province as front line workers surpassed the target under the first phase of Covid-19 vaccine roll out plan. The study concluded that the health communication strategies employed by ZBC-TV have been effective in increasing the societal awareness about health issues. ZBC-TV managed to reach out to the masses using both the television and by making use of the new media communication technologies. However, press censorship has been a challenge in publishing information concerning COVID 19 as the media house is not allowed to publish anything that tarnishes the image of the government. It is based on such evidence that the study concludes that ZBC-TV at some point distorted information to paint the picture that the government is doing all it can to contain the spread of COVID 19 and ensuring the safety of the public. The study recommends that the ministry should ensure freedom of information publicity, in which media houses, including ZBC-TV is not controlled by any political party of government. The government should also privatise ZBC-TV so that it will be answerable to the public and not few government officials. <p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0895/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Who is Setting Emotions? A Comparative Study on Emotion Diffusion in Social Media among Public, Government and Media during the COVID-19 Pandemic in China (Preprint)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuhuan Zhou ◽  
Yi Wang
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Information Exchange ◽  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
Chinese Government ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Time Point

BACKGROUND During the COVID-19 outbreak, social media served as the main platform for information exchange, through which the Chinese government, media and public would spread information. At the same time, a variety of emotions interweave, and the public emotions would also be affected by the government and media. OBJECTIVE This study aims to investigate the types, trends and relationships of emotional diffusion in Chinese social media among the public, the government and the media under the pandemic of COVID-19 (December 30,2019, to July 1,2020) . METHODS In this paper, Python 3.7.0 and its data crawling framework Scrapy 1.5.1 are used to write a web crawler program to search for super topics related to COVID-19 on Sina Weibo platform of different keywords . Then, we used emotional lexicon to analyze the types and trends of the public, government and media emotions on social media. Finally cross-lagged regression was applied to build the relationships of different subjects’ emotions. RESULTS The highlights of our study are threefold: (1) The public, the government and the media mainly diffuse positive emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic in China; (2) Emotional diffusion shows a certain change over time, and negative emotions are obvious in the initial phase of the pandemic, with the development of the pandemic, positive emotions surpass negative emotions and remain stable. (3)The impact among the three main emotions with the period as the time point is weak, while the impact of emotion with the day as the time point is relatively obvious. The emotions of the public and the government impact each other, and the media emotions can guide the public emotions. CONCLUSIONS This is the first study of comparing pubic, government and media emotions on the social media during COVID-19 pandemic in China. The pubic, the government and the media mainly diffuse positive emotions during the pandemic. And the government and the media have better effect on short-term emotional guidance. Therefore, when the pandemic suddenly occurs, the government and the media should intervene in time to solve problems and conflicts and diffuse positive and neutral emotions. In this regard, the government and the media can play important roles through social media in the major outbreaks. At the theoretical level, this paper takes China's epidemic environment and social media as the background to provide one of the explanatory perspectives for the spread of emotions on social media. At the some time, because of this special background, it can provide comparison and reference for the research on internet emotions in other countries.

Behind the Scenes with the Snowden Files

2021 ◽  
pp. 105-122
Author(s):  
Ellen Nakashima
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Careful Consideration ◽  
Right To Know ◽  
Washington Post ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Government ◽  
Duty To Inform ◽  
Push And Pull

This essay examines how the Washington Post dealt with the tension between its duty to inform the public and its desire to protect national security when it received documents leaked by Edward Snowden. The essay describes the push-and-pull between the media and the government. Journalists try to advance the public’s right to know, particularly about potential government encroachment on civil liberties, and the government tries to defend the security of the country while respecting civil liberties. Reporters with a bias for public disclosure voluntarily withhold certain documents and details based on a careful consideration of harm, and intelligence officials with a bias toward secrecy do not fight every disclosure. The Post’s coverage of the Snowden leaks provides an opportunity to gain insights into how to navigate the inevitable conflicts between journalists’ desire to inform the public and the government’s desire to protect its secrets from foreign powers.

Fear and loathing in the community: sexual offenders and desistance in a climate of risk and ‘extreme othering’

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacky Burrows
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Sex Offenders ◽  
Sexual Offenders ◽  
Sex Offender ◽  
The Public ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Master Status ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Government ◽  
Mainstream Society

This chapter focuses attention on sex offenders who, perhaps more than any other 'type' of offender, have been systematically vilified, demonised, and ostracised from mainstream society. The author argues that, for once, the public, the media, the government, and – worryingly – large numbers of professionals seem to be in agreement that such 'othering' is entirely right and proper in what are seen to be the larger interests of public protection. The author explores the implications of this deeply entrenched culture for ‘would-be desisters’ and suggests ways forward that offer individuals opportunities to uncouple from the ‘master status’ of sex offender and to build positive social networks.

The concept of trust in disasters: the Slovenian experience

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (5) ◽  
pp. 603-615
Author(s):  
Marjan Malesic
Keyword(s):  
Disaster Response ◽  
Simple Random Sampling ◽  
Computer Assisted ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Small Areas ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Survey Results ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Military

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify the level of public trust in disaster response actors, i.e. the government, civilian disaster response institutions, the military, NGOs and the media. Design/methodology/approach The data source is the 2015–2016 Slovenian Public Opinion Survey, which used face-to-face interviews (computer-assisted personal interviewing software), and a standardised instrument (questionnaire). A two-stage probability sampling design with stratification at the first stage was applied. The first stage involved a probability proportional to size selection of 150 small areas (statistical areas), where the size measurement was a the number of adult persons in the Central Population Register. The second stage involved the simple random sampling of 12 persons from each of the 150 primary sampling units. A total of 1,024 adult residents participated in the survey. Findings The findings suggest that trust in the government under normal situations is low; however, it becomes slightly higher during disaster conditions. Civilian disaster response institutions (especially firemen and civil protection), the military and NGOs (humanitarian and other volunteer organisations) are highly trusted before and during disasters. Trust in the authorities and media to inform the public in a timely and comprehensive manner about the disaster is also relatively high. Research limitations/implications Perhaps in another period of research, disaster-related experiences of the population might be different, which could certainly change the survey results about trust. Nevertheless, the main finding that low pre-disaster trust can be recovered during a disaster by adequate performance of the institution is not jeopardised. Originality/value The survey results are original.

scholarly journals Internet Public Opinion Evolution in the COVID-19 Event and Coping Strategies

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Zufeng Zhong
Keyword(s):  
Correlation Analysis ◽  
Text Analysis ◽  
Latent Dirichlet Allocation ◽  
Community Management ◽  
Positive Information ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Government ◽  
And Coping ◽  
Work Resumption

ABSTRACT Objectives: In this study, we carried out a text analysis on the information disseminated and discussed among netizens on the Baidu Post Bar (the world’s largest Chinese forum) during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic, to create a policy basis for health administrative departments. Methods: We used Python tools to search for the relevant data on the Baidu Post Bar. Next, a text analysis was performed on the posts’ contents using a combination of latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA), sentiment analysis, and correlation analysis. Results: According to the LDA analysis, the public was highly interested in topics such as COVID-19 prevention, infection symptoms, infection and coping measures, sources of transmission and treatments, community management, and work resumption. The majority of the public had negative emotional values, yet a portion of the public held positive emotional values. We also performed a correlation analysis of the influencing factors was established. Conclusions: Netizens’ degree of concern shown in their posts was greatly associated with the spread of COVID-19. With the rise, diffusion, outbreak, and mitigation of COVID-19 in China, netizens have successively created a large number of posts, and the topics of discussion varied over time. Therefore, the media and the government have the responsibility to distribute positive information, to correctly guide the public’s emotions to bring some sort of reassurance to the public.

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